Det danske Fredsakademi
Kronologi over fredssagen og international politik 24. April 2006 / Time Line April 24, 2006
Version 3.023. April 2006, 25. April 2006
04/24/2006
Statsministeren besøger forsvarets installationer i
Grønland
http://www.stm.dk/Index/dokumenter.asp?o=3&n=0&d=2555&s=1&str=stor
Fra mandag den 24. april til fredag den 28. april 2006
besøger statsministeren flere af forsvarets installationer i
Grønland.
På turens første dag besøger statsministeren
sammen med landsstyreformand Hans Enoksen Qaanaaq og Thule Air
Base.
I Qaanaaq vil statsministeren og landsstyreformanden mødes
med kommunalbestyrelsen. Statsministeren vil efterfølgende
blive vist rundt i byen. Besøget i Qaanaaq vil vare ca. 3
timer.
På Thule Air Base vil statsministeren og landsstyreformanden
få en briefing om basen og blive vist rundt på basen og
i Dundas.
04/24/2006
The Cost of Iraq, Afghanistan, and
Other Global War on Terror Operations Since 9/11 
By: Amy Belasco
Specialist in National Defense
Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade Division
Summary
CRS estimates that Congress has appropriated a total of about $368
billion for military operations, base security, reconstruction,
foreign aid, embassy costs, and veterans’ health care for the
three operations initiated since the 9/11 attacks: Operation
Enduring Freedom (OEF) covering Afghanistan and other Global War on
Terror (GWOT) operations, Operation Noble Eagle (ONE) providing
enhanced security at military bases, and Operation Iraqi Freedom
(OIF), Iraq. This total includes the $50 billion for war costs
included in DOD’s regular FY2006 appropriations — but
not the pending FY2006 War Supplemental or the $50 billion
‘placeholder’ figure included in the FY2007 budget. DOD
has not provided Congress with the costs of these three operations.
Of the $368 billion appropriated so far, CRS estimates that Iraq
will receive about $261 billion (71%), OEF $77 billion (21%), and
enhanced base security about $26 (7%) billion, with about $4
billion that cannot be allocated based on available information.
About 90% of these funds are for DOD and about 9% for foreign aid
programs and embassy operations, and less than 1% for medical care
for veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan.
If Congress approves the additional $71 billion requested in the
FY2006 Supplemental (H.R. 4939) for Iraq and OEF — $67.9
billion for DOD and $3.4 billion for aid and embassy costs —
total war-related funding would rise to about $439 billion. CRS
estimates that total includes about $320 billion for OIF, about $89
billion for OEF, and about $26 billion for enhanced security.
On a monthly basis, DOD spent an average of about $6.4 billion for
OIF, $1.3 billion for OEF and $180 million for enhanced base
security in FY2005. Compared to FY2004, these averages are 28%
higher for Iraq, 18% higher for OEF, and 33% lower for base
security. If a FY2006 supplemental is approved, these monthly
spending levels would increase.
Potential oversight issues for Congress include getting estimates
of the cost to repair and replace war-worn equipment and of
possible offsetting cuts to DOD’s regular budget because
equipment is being fixed or bought earlier than planned. Congress
may also want to look at ways to improve war reporting and to
evaluate DOD policy and contracting decisions that affect certain
types of war support costs. Based on an alternate path that assumes
a drawdown from about 258,000 troops currently engaged in these
operations to 74,000 in FY2010, CBO estimates that war costs could
total $371 billion between FY2007 and FY2016. Adding that amount to
the $440 billion already approved or requested, total funding for
Iraq and the global war on terrorism could reach $811 billion by
2016.
DOD’s annual war funding rose from about $73 billion in
FY2004 to $102 billion in FY2005, and may reach $120 billion in
FY2006 if the pending $68 billion request is enacted. This report
will be updated as warranted.
04/24/2006
Jewish and Palestinian Organizations Defy EU Secrecy
European organizations today defied the refusal of EU Ministers to
publish a report compiled by their own diplomats regarding Israeli
violations of international law with regard to East Jerusalem. Over
30 Jewish, Palestinian, peace and anti-poverty groups from around
Europe will publish the suppressed report on their web sites.
The report, which states that "Israel's activities in Jerusalem are
in violation of both its Roadmap obligations and international law"
was shelved by EU foreign ministers at their 12 December Foreign
Affairs (GAERC) meeting in Brussels, for fear of alienating Israel
and reducing the EU's influence.
Yet, protesting groups point out, only one day after the report's
suppression, Israel announced the building of 300 new homes in the
Maale Adumim settlement, the largest in the occupied territories,
in violation of the Road Map and international law.
Pierre Galand, Senator in the Belgian Parliament and Chair of the
European Co-ordinating Committee on Palestine (ECCP) said:
"European diplomats had the courage to stress the alarming
situation in East Jerusalem. In order to force the EU member states
to respect their own commitment to International Law and Human
Rights, we will publish the report on East Jerusalem on our web
sites, despite the EU refusal to do so."
Dan Judelson, Secretary of European Jews for a Just Peace, said
"The EU are burying their heads in the sand, and are thus
co-responsible, while East Jerusalem residents face repeated
violations of international law and of simple standards of
humanity, all at the hands of the Israeli state. If the EU sits on
this report, we see it as our duty to make it as widely available
as we can."
Nick Dearden, Senior Campaigns Officer at War on Want said: "The
desperation of Palestinians across the West Bank now threatens
those who live in East Jerusalem, as Israel inflames and
intensifies its Occupation. By suppressing the truth, which their
own diplomats have made clear to them, European governments have
sent a clear message to Israel that its aggression will be met only
with silence."
Pierre Galand eccp@skynet.be
+ 32 2 223 07 56
Chairman, European Co-ordinating Committee of NGOs on the question
of Palestine
Dan Judelson
+ 44 (0) 779 339 2820
Secretary, European Jews for a Just Peace:
http://www.ejjp.org
1) The suppressed report can be found on War on Want's web
site:
http://www.waronwant.org
... and on the web site of The Israeli Committee Against House
Demolitions:
http://www.icahd.org .
2) For media information, call War on Want campaigns officer Nick
Dearden, on:
07932 335464
3) This move is also supported by:
Alternative Information Centre, Bethlehem & Jerusalem:
http://www.alternativenews.org
Arab Media Watch, UK:
http://www.arabmediawatch.blogspot.com
Association Belgo-Palestinienne:
http://www.association-belgo-palestinienne
AIPPP Strasbourg:
http://www.protection-palestine.org
BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights,
Bethlehem:
http://www.badil.org
Civimed Initiatives, Strasbourg:
http://www.protection-palestine.org
Collectif judéo-arabe et citoyen pour la paix,
Strasbourg:
http://www.protection-palestine.org
Committee for a Just Peace in the Middle East, Luxembourg:
http://www.cercle.lu
Coordination de l'Appel de Strasbourg:
http://www.protection-palestine.org
Een Ander Joods Geluid, Netherlands:
http://www.eajg.nl
Farrah France:
http://www.protection-palestine.org
Friends of Sabeel-UK:
http://www.sabeel.org/old/friends.html
Humanistic Peace Council, Netherlands:
http://agpolak@freeler.nl
ISM London:
http://www.ism-london.org.uk
Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, Israel:
http://www.icahd.org
Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions-UK:
http://www.icahduk.org
Jews for Israeli Palestinian Peace, Sweden:
http://www.jipf.nu
Jews for Justice for Palestinians, UK:
http://www.jfjfp.org
Judische Stimme für gerechten Frieden in Nahost, Berlin:
http://www.juedische-stimme.de
Just Peace UK:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/justpeaceuk
Netherlands Palestine Committee:
http://www.xs4all.nl/~npk
Network of Jews against the Occupation, Italy:
http://paceinmedioriente.iobloggo.com
NUS Black Students' Campaign, UK:
http://www.nusonline.co.uk/campaigns/blackstudentscampaign
Palestine Forum in Britain:
http://www.pfb.org.uk
Palestine Solidarity Campaign, UK:
http://www.palestinecampaign.org
Society for Austrian Arab Relations, Austria:
http://www.saar.at
Stop the Occupation, Netherlands:
http://www.stopdebezetting.nl
Union Juive Francaise pour la Paix:
http://www.ujfp.org
Union des Progresssite Juifs de Belgiques:
http://www.upjb.be
War on Want, UK
http://www.waronwant.org
Women in Black, The Netherlands:
http://www.vrouweninhetzwart.nl
The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs
PO Box 53062
Washington DC 20009
Phone: (202) 939-6050
Fax: (202) 265-4574
Phone (Toll Free in the USA): (800) 368-5788
http://www.wrmea.com
Published by the American Educational Trust, a non-profit
foundation incorporated in Washington, DC to provide the American
public with balanced and accurate information concerning U.S.
relations with Middle Eastern states. Material from the Washington
Report on Middle East Affairs may be printed without charge with
attribution to the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.
04/24/2006
Target China: The Emerging US-China Conflict
By Michael T. Klare
[Michael Klare, who has written compellingly on oil as a driving
factor in US policy in the Middle East and globally, here turns his
gaze toward yet larger dynamics driving US military strategy. He
concludes that in a world in which there is only one potential
military threat to US primacy, the single logical explanation for
the continued growth of the US military budget, its drive to expand
its nuclear arsenal and to extend its nuclear hegemony to outer
space, can be summed up in one word: China.
To be sure, as Chalmers Johnson and others have pointed out, there
is a self-reinforcing military logic inherent in a polity whose
budget is dominated by the costs associated with permanent warfare,
including a global network of thousands of bases, 8,000 generals
who don’t retire when the latest war ends, and a global
naval-air power reach.
Nevertheless, with China’s emergence as a potential future
adversary, albeit a nation whose naval and air force arsenals pale
before that of the US and many others, and with US moves to
encircle China with U.S. bases and expanded strategic alliances, it
is necessary to place the issue of containing China once again on
the Bush administration’s front burner. As Klare observes in
a letter of April 19, 2006, there is an “iron determination
behind the US decision to commit hundreds of billions of dollars to
advanced weapons systems that can only be justified for use in a
future war with China, and the decision to station six carrier
battle groups and 60 percent of US submarines in the Pacific. These
commitments will shape events in Asia and globally for decades to
come.”
US foreign policy is not, however, made by the President and his
neoliberal advisors alone. Powerful interests from Microsoft to
Citibank to General Motors are well aware of the fact that China is
the number three trading partner, and is second only to Japan in
propping up the US from the collapse that accompanies chronic
deficits in the case of other economies. The intertwined US and
Chinese economies, China’s importance to the US in
geopolitical and other spheres, and the over-extended state of the
US military point to the fact that, at least in the short run,
powerful forces are at work to settle conflicts short of war. Yet
other flash points could precipitate US-China conflict.
The issues of China and the Middle East are intimately linked, most
pointedly by the recent decisions of China and Russia to invite
Iran to membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization at the
very moment when the US seeks to isolate Iran and secure United
Nations condemnation of Iran preparatory for military attack or
regime change. MS]
Slowly but surely, the grand strategy of the Bush administration is
being revealed. It is not aimed primarily at the defeat of global
terrorism, the incapacitation of rogue states, or the spread of
democracy in the Middle East. These may dominate the rhetorical
arena and be the focus of immediate concern, but they do not govern
key decisions regarding the allocation of long-term military
resources. The truly commanding objective -- the underlying basis
for budgets and troop deployments -- is the containment of China.
This objective governed White House planning during the
administration's first seven months in office, only to be set aside
by the perceived obligation to highlight anti-terrorism after 9/11;
but now, despite Bush's preoccupation with Iraq and Iran, the White
House is also reemphasizing its paramount focus on China, risking a
new Asian arms race with potentially catastrophic consequences.
President Bush and his top aides entered the White House in early
2001 with a clear strategic objective: to resurrect the
permanent-dominance doctrine spelled out in the Defense Planning
Guidance (DPG) for fiscal years 1994-99, the first formal statement
of U.S. strategic goals in the post-Soviet era. According to the
initial official draft of this document, as leaked to the press in
early 1992, the primary aim of U.S. strategy would be to bar the
rise of any future competitor that might challenge America's
overwhelming military superiority.
"Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new
rival... that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by
the Soviet Union," the document stated. Accordingly, "we [must]
endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region
whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to
generate global power."
When initially made public, this doctrine was condemned by
America's allies and many domestic leaders as being unacceptably
imperial as well as imperious, forcing the first President Bush to
water it down; but the goal of perpetuating America's
sole-superpower status has never been rejected by administration
strategists. In fact, it initially became the overarching principle
for U.S. military policy when the younger Bush assumed the
presidency in February 2001.
Target: China
When first enunciated in 1992, the permanent-dominancy doctrine was
non-specific as to the identity of the future challengers whose
rise was to be prevented through coercive action. At that time,
U.S. strategists worried about a medley of potential rivals,
including Russia, Germany, India, Japan, and China; any of these,
it was thought, might emerge in decades to come as would-be
superpowers, and so all would have to be deterred from moving in
this direction. By the time the second Bush administration came
into office, however, the pool of potential rivals had been
narrowed in elite thinking to just one: the People's Republic of
China. Only China, it was claimed, possessed the economic and
military capacity to challenge the United States as an aspiring
superpower; and so perpetuating U.S. global predominance meant
containing Chinese power.
The imperative of containing China was first spelled out in a
systematic way by Condoleezza Rice while serving as a foreign
policy adviser to then Governor George W. Bush during the 2000
presidential campaign. In a much-cited article in Foreign Affairs,
she suggested that the PRC, as an ambitious rising power, would
inevitably challenge vital U.S. interests. "China is a great power
with unresolved vital interests, particularly concerning Taiwan,"
she wrote. "China also resents the role of the United States in the
Asia-Pacific region."
For these reasons, she stated, "China is not a ‘status quo'
power but one that would like to alter Asia's balance of power in
its own favor. That alone makes it a strategic competitor, not the
‘strategic partner' the Clinton administration once called
it." It was essential, she argued, to adopt a strategy that would
prevent China's rise as regional power. In particular, "The United
States must deepen its cooperation with Japan and South Korea and
maintain its commitment to a robust military presence in the
region." Washington should also "pay closer attention to India's
role in the regional balance," and bring that country into an
anti-Chinese alliance system.
Looking back, it is striking how this article developed the
allow-no-competitors doctrine of the 1992 DPG into the very
strategy now being implemented by the Bush administration in the
Pacific and South Asia. Many of the specific policies advocated in
her piece, from strengthened ties with Japan to making overtures to
India, are being carried out today.
In the spring and summer of 2001, however, the most significant
effect of this strategic focus was to distract Rice and other
senior administration officials from the growing threat posed by
Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. During her first months in office as
the president's senior adviser for national security affairs, Rice
devoted herself to implementing the plan she had spelled out in
Foreign Affairs. By all accounts, her top priorities in that early
period were dissolving the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with
Russia and linking Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan into a joint
missile defense system, which, it was hoped, would ultimately
evolve into a Pentagon-anchored anti-Chinese alliance.
Richard A. Clarke, the senior White House adviser on
counter-terrorism, later charged that, because of her preoccupation
with Russia, China, and great power politics, Rice overlooked
warnings of a possible Al Qaeda attack on the United States and
thus failed to initiate defensive actions that might have prevented
9/11. Although Rice survived tough questioning on this matter by
the 9/11 Commission without acknowledging the accuracy of Clarke's
charges, any careful historian, seeking answers for the Bush
administration's inexcusable failure to heed warnings of a
potential terrorist strike on this country, must begin with its
overarching focus on containing China during this critical
period.
China on the Back Burner
After September 11th, it would have been unseemly for Bush, Rice,
and other top administration officials to push their China agenda
-- and in any case they quickly shifted focus to a long-term neocon
objective, the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and the projection of
American power throughout the Middle East. So the "global war on
terror" (or GWOT, in Pentagon-speak) became their major talking
point and the invasion of Iraq their major focus. But the
administration never completely lost sight of its strategic focus
on China, even when it could do little on the subject. Indeed, the
lightning war on Iraq and the further projection of American power
into the Middle East was intended, at least in part, as a warning
to China of the overwhelming might of the American military and the
futility of challenging U.S. supremacy.
For the next two years, when so much effort was devoted to
rebuilding Iraq in America's image and crushing an unexpected and
potent Iraqi insurgency, China was distinctly on the back-burner.
In the meantime, however, China's increased investment in modern
military capabilities and its growing economic reach in Southeast
Asia, Africa, and Latin America -- much of it tied to the
procurement of oil and other vital commodities -- could not be
ignored.
By the spring of 2005, the White House was already turning back to
Rice's global grand strategy. On June 4, 2005, Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld gave a much-publicized speech at a conference in
Singapore, signaling what was to be a new emphasis in White House
policymaking, in which he decried China's ongoing military buildup
and warned of the threat it posed to regional peace and
stability.
China, he claimed, was "expanding its missile forces, allowing them
to reach targets in many areas of the world" and "improving its
ability to project power" in the Asia-Pacific region. Then, with
sublime disingenuousness, he added, "Since no nation threatens
China, one must wonder: Why this growing investment? Why these
continuing and expanding arms purchases? Why these continuing
robust deployments?" Although Rumsfeld did not answer his
questions, the implication was obvious: China was now embarked on a
course that would make it a regional power, thus threatening one
day to present a challenge to the United States in Asia on
unacceptably equal terms.
This early sign of the ratcheting up of anti-Chinese rhetoric was
accompanied by acts of a more concrete nature. In February 2005,
Rice and Rumsfeld hosted a meeting in Washington with top Japanese
officials at which an agreement was signed to improve cooperation
in military affairs between the two countries. Known as the "Joint
Statement of the U.S.-Japan Security Consultative Committee," the
agreement called for greater collaboration between American and
Japanese forces in the conduct of military operations in an area
stretching from Northeast Asia to the South China Sea. It also
called for close consultation on policies regarding Taiwan, an
implicit hint that Japan was prepared to assist the United States
in the event of a military clash with China precipitated by
Taiwan's declaring its independence.
This came at a time when Beijing was already expressing
considerable alarm over pro-independence moves in Taiwan and what
the Chinese saw as a revival of militarism in Japan -- thus evoking
painful memories of World War II, when Japan invaded China and
committed massive atrocities against Chinese civilians.
Understandably then, the agreement could only be interpreted by the
Chinese leadership as an expression of the Bush administration's
determination to bolster an anti-Chinese alliance system.
The New Grand Chessboard
Why did the White House choose this particular moment to revive its
drive to contain China? Many factors no doubt contributed to this
turnaround, but surely the most significant was a perception that
China had finally emerged as a major regional power in its own
right and was beginning to contest America's long-term dominance of
the Asia-Pacific region. To some degree this was manifested -- so
the Pentagon claimed -- in military terms, as Beijing began to
replace Soviet-type, Korean War-vintage weapons with more modern
(though hardly cutting-edge) Russian designs.
It was not China's military moves, however, that truly alarmed
American policymakers -- most professional analysts are well aware
of the continuing inferiority of Chinese weaponry -- but rather
Beijing's success in using its enormous purchasing power and hunger
for resources to establish friendly ties with such long-standing
U.S. allies as Thailand, Indonesia, and Australia. Because the Bush
administration had done little to contest this trend while focusing
on the war in Iraq, China's rapid gains in Southeast Asia finally
began to ring alarm bells in Washington.
At the same time, Republican strategists were becoming increasingly
concerned by growing Chinese involvement in the Persian Gulf and
Central Asia -- areas considered of vital geopolitical importance
to the United States because of the vast reserves of oil and
natural gas buried there. Much influenced by Zbigniew Brzezinski,
whose 1997 book The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and
Geostrategic Imperatives first highlighted the critical importance
of Central Asia, these strategists sought to counter Chinese
inroads. Although Brzezinski himself has largely been excluded from
elite Republican circles because of his association with the
much-despised Carter administration, his call for a coordinated
U.S. drive to dominate both the eastern and western rimlands of
China has been embraced by senior administration strategists.
In this way, Washington's concern over growing Chinese influence in
Southeast Asia has come to be intertwined with the U.S. drive for
hegemony in the Persian Gulf and Central Asia. This has given China
policy an even more elevated significance in Washington -- and
helps explain its return with a passion despite the seemingly
all-consuming preoccupations of the war in Iraq.
Whatever the exact balance of factors, the Bush administration is
now clearly engaged in a coordinated, systematic effort to contain
Chinese power and influence in Asia. This effort appears to have
three broad objectives: to convert existing relations with Japan,
Australia, and South Korea into a robust, integrated anti-Chinese
alliance system; to bring other nations, especially India, into
this system; and to expand U.S. military capabilities in the
Asia-Pacific region.
Since the administration's campaign to bolster ties with Japan
commenced a year ago, the two countries have been meeting
continuously to devise protocols for the implementation of their
2005 strategic agreement. In October, Washington and Tokyo released
the Alliance Transformation and Realignment Report, which is to
guide the further integration of U.S. and Japanese forces in the
Pacific and the simultaneous restructuring of the U.S. basing
system in Japan. (Some of these bases, especially those on Okinawa,
have become a source of friction in U.S.-Japanese relations and so
the Pentagon is now considering ways to downsize the most
objectionable installations.) Japanese and American officers are
also engaged in a joint "interoperability" study, aimed at
smoothing the "interface" between U.S. and Japanese combat and
communications systems. "Close collaboration is also ongoing for
cooperative missile defense," reports Admiral William J. Fallon,
commander-in-chief of the U.S. Pacific Command (PACOM).
Steps have also been taken in this ongoing campaign to weld South
Korea and Australia more tightly to the U.S.-Japanese alliance
system. South Korea has long been reluctant to work closely with
Japan because of that country's brutal occupation of the Korean
peninsula from 1910 to 1945 and lingering fears of Japanese
militarism; now, however, the Bush administration is promoting what
it calls "trilateral military cooperation" between Seoul, Tokyo,
and Washington. As indicated by Admiral Fallon, this initiative has
an explicitly anti-Chinese dimension. America's ties with South
Korea must adapt to "the changing security environment" represented
by "China's military modernization," Fallon told the Senate Armed
Services Committee on March 7. By cooperating with the U.S. and
Japan, he continued, South Korea will move from an overwhelming
focus on North Korea to "a more regional view of security and
stability."
Bringing Australia into this emerging anti-Chinese network has been
a major priority of Condoleezza Rice, who spent several days there
in mid-March. Although designed in part to bolster U.S.-Australian
ties (largely neglected by Washington over the past few years), the
main purpose of her visit was to host a meeting of top officials
from Australia, the U.S., and Japan to develop a common strategy
for curbing China's rising influence in Asia. No formal results
were announced, but Steven Weisman of the New York Times reported
on March 19 that Rice convened the meeting "to deepen a three-way
regional alliance aimed in part at balancing the spreading presence
of China."
An even bigger prize, in Washington's view, would be the
integration of India into this emerging alliance system, a
possibility first suggested in Rice's Foreign Affairs article. Such
a move was long frustrated by congressional objections to India's
nuclear weapons program and its refusal to sign on to the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Under U.S. law, nations like India
that refuse to cooperate in non-proliferation measures can be
excluded from various forms of aid and cooperation. To overcome
this problem, President Bush met with Indian officials in New Delhi
in March and negotiated a nuclear accord that will open India's
civilian reactors to International Atomic Energy Agency inspection,
thus providing a thin gloss of non-proliferation cooperation to
India's robust nuclear weapons program. If Congress approves Bush's
plan, the United States will be free to provide nuclear assistance
to India and, in the process, significantly expand already growing
military-to-military ties.
In signing the nuclear pact with India, Bush did not allude to the
administration's anti-Chinese agenda, saying only that it would lay
the foundation for a "durable defense relationship." But few have
been fooled by this vague characterization. According to Weisman of
the Times, most U.S. lawmakers view the nuclear accord as an
expression of the administration's desire to convert India into "a
counterweight to China."
The China Build-up Begins
Accompanying all these diplomatic initiatives has been a vigorous,
if largely unheralded, effort by the Department of Defense (DoD) to
bolster U.S. military capabilities in the Asia-Pacific region.
The broad sweep of American strategy was first spelled out in the
Pentagon's most recent policy assessment, the Quadrennial Defense
Review (QDR) , released on February 5, 2006. In discussing
long-term threats to U.S. security, the QDR begins with a
reaffirmation of the overarching precept first articulated in the
DPG of 1992: that the United States will not allow the rise of a
competing superpower. This country "will attempt to dissuade any
military competitor from developing disruptive or other
capabilities that could enable regional hegemony or hostile action
against the United States," the document states. It then identifies
China as the most likely and dangerous competitor of this sort. "Of
the major and emerging powers, China has the greatest potential to
compete militarily with the United States and field disruptive
military technologies that could over time offset traditional U.S.
military advantages" -- then adding the kicker, "absent U.S.
counter strategies."
According to the Pentagon, the task of countering future Chinese
military capabilities largely entails the development, and then
procurement, of major weapons systems that would ensure U.S.
success in any full-scale military confrontation. "The United
States will develop capabilities that would present any adversary
with complex and multidimensional challenges and complicate its
offensive planning efforts," the QDR explains. These include the
steady enhancement of such "enduring U.S. advantages" as
"long-range strike, stealth, operational maneuver and sustainment
of air, sea, and ground forces at strategic distances, air
dominance, and undersea warfare."
Preparing for war with China, in other words, is to be the future
cash cow for the giant U.S. weapons-making corporations in the
military-industrial complex. It will, for instance, be the primary
justification for the acquisition of costly new weapons systems
such as the F-22A Raptor air-superiority fighter, the multi-service
Joint Strike Fighter, the DDX destroyer, the Virginia-class nuclear
attack submarine, and a new, intercontinental penetrating bomber --
weapons that would just have utility in an all-out encounter with
another great-power adversary of a sort that only China might
someday become.
In addition to these weapons programs, the QDR also calls for a
stiffening of present U.S. combat forces in Asia and the Pacific,
with a particular emphasis on the Navy (the arm of the military
least utilized in the ongoing occupation of and war in Iraq). "The
fleet will have greater presence in the Pacific Ocean," the
document notes. To achieve this, "The Navy plans to adjust its
force posture and basing to provide at least six operationally
available and sustainable [aircraft] carriers and 60% of its
submarines in the Pacific to support engagement, presence and
deterrence." Since each of these carriers is, in fact, but the core
of a large array of support ships and protective aircraft, this
move is sure to entail a truly vast buildup of U.S. naval
capabilities in the Western Pacific and will certainly necessitate
a substantial expansion of the American basing complex in the
region -- a requirement that is already receiving close attention
from Admiral Fallon and his staff at PACOM. To assess the
operational demands of this buildup, moreover, this summer the U.S.
Navy will conduct its most extensive military maneuvers in the
Western Pacific since the end of the Vietnam War, with four
aircraft carrier battle groups and many support ships expected to
participate.
Add all of this together, and the resulting strategy cannot be
viewed as anything but a systematic campaign of containment. No
high administration official may say this in so many words, but it
is impossible to interpret the recent moves of Rice and Rumsfeld in
any other manner. From Beijing's perspective, the reality must be
unmistakable: a steady buildup of American military power along
China's eastern, southern, and western boundaries.
How will China respond to this threat? For now, it appears to be
relying on charm and the conspicuous blandishment of economic
benefits to loosen Australian, South Korean, and even Indian ties
with the United States. To a certain extent, this strategy is
meeting with success, as these countries seek to profit from the
extraordinary economic boom now under way in China – fueled
to a considerable extent by oil, gas, iron, timber, and other
materials supplied by China's neighbors in Asia. A version of this
strategy is also being employed by President Hu Jintao during his
current visit to the United States. As China's money is sprinkled
liberally among influential firms like Boeing and Microsoft, Hu is
reminding the corporate wing of the Republican Party that there are
vast economic benefits still to be had by pursuing a
non-threatening stance toward China.
China, however, has always responded to perceived threats of
encirclement in a vigorous and muscular fashion as well, and so we
should assume that Beijing will balance all that charm with a
military buildup of its own. Such a drive will not bring China to
the brink of military equality with the United States -- that is
not a condition it can realistically aspire to over the next few
decades. But it will provide further justification for those in the
United States who seek to accelerate the containment of China, and
so will produce a self-fulfilling loop of distrust, competition,
and crisis. This will make the amicable long-term settlement of the
Taiwan problem and of North Korea's nuclear program that much more
difficult, and increase the risk of unintended escalation to
full-scale war in Asia. There can be no victors from such a
conflagration.
Michael T. Klare is a professor of peace and world security studies
at Hampshire College and the author of Blood and Oil: The Dangers
and Consequences of America's Growing Dependency on Imported
Petroleum (Owl Books, 2005).
This article appeared on April 18, 2006 at Tomdispatch.com, a
weblog of the Nation Institute, which offers a steady flow of
alternate sources, news, and opinion from Tom Engelhardt, long time
editor in publishing, co-founder of the American Empire Project and
author of The End of Victory Culture. Chalmers Johnson is
completing the third volume in the Blowback Trilogy. Posted at
Japan Focus on April 19, 2006
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